Archive for the ‘Cloud’ Category
Virtualization Performance: Zones, KVM, Xen
At Joyent we run a high-performance public cloud based on two different virtualization technologies: Zones and KVM. We have historically run Xen as well, but have phased it out for KVM on SmartOS. My job is to make things go fast, which often means using DTrace to analyze the kernel, applications, and those virtualization technologies. [...]
In: Cloud, DTrace, KVM, performance, xen, zones
Visualizing Process Execution
In Visualizing Process Snapshots I showed processes and their parent-child hierarchy over time, using snapshots of process information. This approach misses short-lived processes that occur between the snapshots. Here I’ll fill in the gaps using system tracing, visualizing all processes that occurred. Snapshots vs Tracing 1 second snapshots (eg, top) [...]
In: Cloud, DTrace, experimental, performance, visualizations
Visualizing Process Snapshots
In Visualizing the Cloud I showed processes and their parent-child hierarchy, across a cloud environment, exploring patterns at different scales. Here I’ll take this a little further and look at processes over time. These are experimental visualizations shared to explore ideas. It’s Alive! Many who have seen this have described it as “creepy” — looking [...]
In: Cloud, experimental, performance, visualizations
Visualizing the Cloud
I’ve worked on visualizations for a while, most recently with heatmaps for Joyent’s Cloud Analytics. While we’re using and enhancing these right now, we are also in a great position to continue developing new visualizations for cloud computing, given: Easy observability into all nodes via zones, and deeper analysis using DTrace. JavaScript and node.js to [...]
In: Cloud, joyent, visualizations
Visualizing KVM
Last March, Bryan Cantrill and I joined Max Bruning on working towards bringing KVM to illumos. Six months ago we found ourselves looping in x86 real mode and today we’re booting everything from Linux to Plan 9 to Weenix! For a bit more background on how we got there take a gander at Bryan’s entry [...]
